Asked about his VP choice, Donald Trump rambled and blabbered about himself, then got caught in a lie. Bret Baier, Fox’s “ultimate journalist,” spun it as part of how well he’s doing.
On Fox News Sunday, anchor Shannon Bream was joined in New Hampshire by Bret Baier, among others. As part of her panel discussion, she played a clip of Trump talking to Baier about the veepstakes.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, it looked to me like somebody or somebodies at Fox News deliberately portrayed Trump in an unflattering light but was too cowardly to be critical.
Bream said that Trump and Baier “talked about many issues” so unless Trump sounded even worse in the other clips, it seems odd that this particular bit of nonsensical, grievance-filled rambling was chosen to highlight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: You said in our town hall that you had an idea or you might have already decided about your VP pick. When do you think you're going to make that?
TRUMP: Well, it's never really had that much of an effect on an election, which is an amazing thing, both election and primary. It's never really had much of an effect. I may or may not release something over the next couple of months. There's no rush for that. It won't have any impact at all. The person that I think I like is a very good person, pretty standard. I think people won't be that surprised. But I would say there's probably a 25% chance it would be that person.
BAIER: Is Senator Tim Scott on the list now?
TRUMP: He's a great guy. He endorsed me. There's an example. Nikki comes from South Carolina. Tim Scott is from South Carolina. But if you look, the governor, great governor, another senator, Lindsey, we happened to like Lindsey, but Henry McMaster knows her very well. He endorsed me. It's very hard for a governor to endorse somebody when you have, you know, I mean, Henry McMaster was the lieutenant governor under her. And he endorsed me. Almost everybody in South Carolina has endorsed me. What does that tell you?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Bream’s follow up comment was pointed: “So, you ask about the vice president and then we get into the, you know, the critique of one of the current rivals,” she said.
Baier replied by pointing out Trump's lie about his VP pick:
BAIER: Yeah, we went through a lot of things actually in this interview and we'll be putting out a lot today. But in that VP thing he did say in our town hall that he had come to a conclusion. He knew who it was and maybe at some later point he'd tell us who it was. [In that clip,] he said there's a 25% chance, but that's a good person who he's thinking about.
FACT CHECK: Baier is correct. Trump did say in the Fox town hall, less than two weeks ago, “I know who it’s going to be” when asked who was in the running to be his VP.
But then, after Trump’s lie and his perpetually whiny narcissism had been exposed, albeit briefly, Baier immediately started to talk up Trump:
BAIER: I think his thought process overall, Shannon, was that he feels like he's in a good place. This rally here was really well attended, was really packed. He likes that thinks it's a poll in and of itself. And at the end of that rally, he brought out all of these South Carolina figures to say the next stop is going to be even bigger.
Fox has touted Baier as representing “ultimate journalistic integrity.” Yet this is the same “ultimate” journalist who suggested Fox not base its election calls solely on statistics but also on viewer sentiment. He also suggested, in 2020, that the network reverse its early call for Biden as the winner in Arizona.
If Baier is Fox’s idea of “ultimate journalistic integrity,” I hate to imagine the shenanigans of the also-rans.
You can watch Baier bend the knee to Trump and his supporters below, from the January 21, 2024 Fox News Sunday.
